www.NewWaveFeminists.com

Friday, September 29, 2017

Once upon a time,
women got wise to the ways of misogynist men and began standing up for their
rights...

When the big bad pig patriarchy realized that this meant they
could no longer abuse women and get sex out of them at will and that *gasp!*
they would actually have to start respecting them as equal human beings, they
knew something had to be done. And quick!

So they came up with a plan...

They would convince women that consequence-free sex
was what they actually wanted all along. After all, didn't they mention
something about equality? So, if these men were pigs, then women should
be able to be pigs too, right?!

To help the women on their journey to liberation,
the pigs packed them a picnic basket with plenty of delicious little treats -
like poisonous (shhhh!) birth control pills and the "right" to
abortion. Then they convinced the women that their bodies were no longer
private entities to be respected, but instead told them that if they were truly
free, then their nipples should be too! Their bodies went on public displays
for all the pigs to consume.

"Of course we 'respect' your sexuality,"
the misogynists would say with a chuckle as they watched the women strut about
topless, ogling their boobs on street corners instead of in brothels. "You
can sleep with me if you want and, get this, if you never want to see me again,
well, that's just fine with me... your ‘liberation’ is my command!" they'd
say. "Just reach into that picnic basket we packed for you and let me free
you from the confines of this sexually oppressive society you've been trapped
in for so long."

They added, "Oh! And don't worry, if an
‘accident’ happens and we procreate while engaging in this procreative act,
you'll know what to do. After all, the basis for your empowerment is my, er, I
mean your sexual freedom, right? And we can't just let some kid get in
the way of you expressing yourself, can we? Of course not! ...I'd offer to pay
for it, but you're an empowered, independent woman who makes her own money, so
I know you won't need anything from me!"

And the women ate it up, making pigs of themselves
because these lies tasted so good at first. The misogynist pigs used all the
right words to make it sound extra tasty. And the next morning, after the pigs
had gotten all they wanted out of the women, they moved on to their next sexual
conquest. But not before telling the woman how empowered they were and leaving
one more tiny jewelry-shaped gift at her door.

See, the women who decades ago had shaken off the
shackles of bondage would now gleefully put them back on, all because the
misogynists convinced them that the shackles were really bracelets.

Moral of the story: Don't convince yourself you've smashed the patriarchy, simply because it's wearing a different mask now.

*Please note that this story is not about all men. Only douchebag pigs, or "the New Patriarchy" as we like to call them around here.***************************************************

Monday, June 26, 2017

A few years ago a neighbor invited me to volunteer at something called a "Prostitute Round Up." The name, admittedly, is the worst, but the mission itself was focused on restorative justice.

The Dallas Police Department and a local church had teamed up to not just get women off the streets, but help them stay off the streets.

We arrived around 10 o'clock to an empty parking lot where three large trailers sat. I was told that the first trailer would be used as a holding cell for the women until they were able to see the judge. "Couldn't they just process them as they came in?" I naively thought.

I had no idea what I was about to see.

A little after midnight vice cops began showing up with the women in droves. They didn't look anything like I'd expected. These weren't the women portrayed on Law & Order SVU in tight mini dresses and 6-inches heels. Most of them were wearing baggy t-shirts and long blue jean shorts or sweatpants, their hair in messy ponytails, and quite a few were missing teeth. We were put to work making sandwiches because you could tell that many of them hadn't eaten in days.

This was not an empowered life choice they were making. These women were slaves to drug addiction.

One by one they were taken from the first trailer to the second one where they would see the judge for sentencing. This is where she would tell them that instead of going to jail they were going to be given a second option: treatment at a rehab facility which was being paid for by the church.

Almost all of the women chose to seek help, and that's when they started calling in the social workers.

It was like watching a relay race. The social worker would get the addresses from the officers and hurriedly rush off to collect the children who'd been left home unattended. Their ages ranged from teens all the way down to infants.

And that's when I stopped spouting the line that drugs and prostitution are "victimless crimes." They are anything but.

I never in a million years thought I would consider those children "lucky," but as The Dallas Morning News recently discovered, so many others never have a social worker show up at their door at all...

Monday, June 19, 2017

Destiny here, reporting live from a bathroom stall at the LSU student center where I'm currently crying. BTW, I might be doing feminism wrong. Sike. We're evidently doing it totally right, which is why I'm in this predicament. Allow me to explain.... So Aimee and her crew from Rehumanize International are tabling at LSU this morning and I got suckered into coming along. I say 'suckered' because I hate intentionally engaging people in this debate. I prefer a more organic app...roach usually involving booze. But, I digress. If anyone can do it right, it's Aimee.

She has this big banner that reads, "Can You Be Pro-Life and a Feminist?" which she posts up next to her table, and then she invites students walking by to log their vote on a poster board marked "YES" or "NO." We'd been standing around for about 30 minutes when a bus full of college students pulled up, unloaded, and started walking towards us. One by one a group of about 20 women took the time to cast their votes. Unanimously they said YES, you CAN BE prolife and a feminist. And now you're all caught up. I had to walk away because we weren't trying to poll students on whether or not you could be a blubbering, middle-aged, purple haired, hormonal mess on a college campus. (That's really more of a "should you" vs a "can you" anyway.) Bottom line, we started a national conversation in January with the Women's March and now at college campuses across this nation we're hearing the answer. Yes.

Yes, you can be prolife and a feminist. Yes, you can demand better for pregnant and parenting students on campus. Yes, you can keep your child and still succeed in life. Yes, women are finished with the lie that we must accept violence against the weakest and most vulnerable human beings - our own children - in order to achieve true liberation. Because we know, WE KNOW, authentic empowerment does not oppress others, it stands up and empowers them as well. And we won't accept anything less.

Btw, I'm the jerk who added the "no" vote... just so that it would be less intimidating. And then no one followed suit! :)

This morning I listened to a talk on the power of fatherhood. I won't lie, it was hard to hear what the speaker was saying without feeling a bit defensive. He began by citing statistics for children who are raised in homes without fathers and how they face higher rates of depression, drug use, incarceration, and academic failure. Check, check, almost, and check. He went on to say that adolescent females raised without fathers are more likely to fall into promiscuous lifestyles, and subsequent unplanned pregnancies. Check, and check. He was describing me. A self-proclaimed feminist. A feminist who was raised by an amazing, strong, hard-working mother... but no matter how hard she tried, she could never be my father. And this might not be anyone else's experience, but it is mine. I'm strong like my mother. I'm opinionated, and stubborn. But there's a part of me - and there probably always will be - that's broken because I never knew my real dad. My mother took me to see him just once, thinking it might cause him to change his mind. I was two weeks old. He commented on how long my eyelashes were, then he never laid eyes on me again. I wasn't enough... or maybe he wasn't enough. I really don't know. But for years I tried to reach out to him; my letters and phone calls always going unanswered. So I looked for validation in others. Mostly guys. I told myself that this behavior was empowering. They wanted me.... someone wanted me, at least for a little while... and that felt powerful. I would leave them before they could leave me, because that's what badass chicks did. Then I'd bask in how liberated and cool I was."Look at me, I don't need them... maybe I'm more like my dad than I realized..." But at the end of the day it was my lack of self-worth, not empowerment, that led to those actions. And before I knew it, I was repeating my mother's life. Pregnant, single... having to be even stronger now that someone else would be depending on me, like I depended on her. So much of our strength came from their weakness. I am a man-made feminist. And I hate that. I hate that my strength often feels inauthentic because would I even be who I am today if so many men along the way hadn't failed me? Perhaps I'll never know. But I do think this is what makes my mission with New Wave Feminists a bit different. I know that bad guys exist, but I haven't lost faith in the good ones. I understand the power of fatherhood because I've experienced the pain of its absence. I've often said that when women are better, men are better. That is why NWF will never be about trashing males. It'll never be about embracing the toxic elements of radical feminism that tell us we don't need them, or that our power comes through controlling men with our sexuality. Because I've lived both of those lies, and I know better. Fathers are irreplaceable. Period. Full stop. So to all the good guys, to all the men who are making this world and the women in it better through their love and support, Happy Father's Day. What you are doing matters so much more than you know and the ripples of your impact on our lives will affect more generations than you will probably live to see.

*************************

As a side note, I found out two years ago that my biological father passed away. And while I'm sad that I never got to know him, he was the one who missed out. My children, his grandchildren, would've filled his life with so much joy.

So, if you're reading this and you have a son or daughter out there that you're afraid to reach out to because you're just not sure how they'll react, please don't let that fear stop you. I wish I could've told my father that. If you still have air in your lungs, it's not too late...

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

It’s a Tuesday late in April and Melissa Gormley sits in a recliner, cherishing the bumps and kicks from her baby, growing inside her womb.

As minutes crawl into hours, the sign of life is a welcomed distraction from the taxol and carboplatin streaming through her veins.

Melissa, 31, is not alone, surrounded by other patients in a room full of recliners and IVs, as she sits through her first chemotherapy session. The cancerous tumor on her cervix threatens to deny her a full motherhood experience, and even though her first pregnancy was not planned nor expected, Gormley’s motherly instincts are already sharpened and she is prepared to fight.

“There are definitely times where I break down crying,” Melissa said. “It’s scary thinking about all the what ifs. Like, what if it doesn’t work? What if something happens during delivery? All of those thoughts go through your head. She’s moving a lot now, so every time we have that I just think, we’re doing all this so she’s healthy, so I’m healthy, so I can be there for her. That kind of helps me get through it.”

Melissa Gormley met Dave Good 13 months ago, while training for their serving jobs at World of Beer in Exton, PA.

An unassuming beginning led to a spontaneous six-hour first date which led to a relationship. “She was so shy and she had this nervous laugh,” Dave recalls.

Just after New Year’s, the couple received the most life-changing of all surprises: Melissa was pregnant.

“We were both kind of like, ‘what?!,’” she said. Shock transformed into excitement, and at 14 weeks the pair found out they’d be having a girl.

That same night, Melissa experienced some light bleeding, which prompted a trip to the doctor, and eventually a biopsy.

Every day that passed, every time the phone rang, tension and urgency built, magnified by the little life inside.

“We were so excited and were finally over the shock of ‘we’re pregnant,’” David said. “We were starting to be like, ‘This is awesome, we’re going to be able to start our life together’ and then we get this news and we wondered, what does that mean for our new life? Did it mean it couldn’t happen anymore? Can we still have the baby? Is Melissa going to be OK?”

When Melissa finally got a voicemail from their doctor's personal cell phone, she didn’t want to call back. There was little that could soften the blow of the news: cervical cancer.

“I was in shock at that point,” Melissa said. “I kind of mentally prepared myself that I might not get the news I wanted, but it was still very hard hearing that.”

The process to recovery began, but Gormley’s case was not only rare, but a bit more challenging, timeline-wise.

Had Melissa been early into her pregnancy, terminating it may have been a recommended route. Discovery in the third trimester could have allowed for some wiggle room on the start of treatment.

Melissa was smack-dab in the middle of her pregnancy, leaving her with really only one choice.

“Ending the pregnancy was not an option for me,” she said. “I knew that right from the beginning. Even if they were like ‘we can’t do anything for you,’ I would’ve waited. I was really just concerned for her.”

Friends and family searched for the right response in an avalanche of unknown.

“It was heartbreaking,” said Sharon Good, Dave’s mother. “To go from such a high of knowing I was going to be a grandmother to hearing she has cancer, it broke my heart. Whoever thought a pregnant woman could have chemo, but when I heard that I said, ‘OK, we’re gonna fight this.’ There’s nothing else to do.”

With more and more information out there, chemotherapy while pregnant is a viable option. Melissa will have her second chemo session Tuesday and another three weeks after. Following that, she’ll undergo another MRI to check the progress. If the tumor has been reduced, Gormley will go for a fourth session. If progress is minimal, the plan is to deliver the baby through caesarean section around 30 weeks and then surgically remove the tumor.

Needless to say, when baby Olivia makes her arrival to the world, she will be a beacon of joy and of hope and of gratefulness.

Here at NWF we've been blown away by Melissa, Dave, and baby Olivia's story of strength. If you'd like to help them cover some of their unexpected medical expenses, here are the following ways to donate:

And third, democrats are such bleeding heart hippies. This shit is totally their jam! I mean, aren't they supposed to be all about helping the weak and oppressed?! How they are not already pro-life, blows my mind. At no point in our lives are we more vulnerable and marginalized than when we are in the womb.

That said, in my opinion, the most dangerous thing we ever did was make abortion a partisan issue - and thereby "political." This is about violence against another human being. Opposing rape and murder are not "conservative" or "liberal" platforms. Abortion shouldn't be either. It's violence.

Yet somehow it's now a party platform.

So what ends up happening is we have a lot of conservatives working overtime to make sure their republican candidates are prolife "enough." Meanwhile, democrats are trying to radicalize their own base into becoming insanely "up to the moment of birth" pro-choice.

Most Americans don't even agree with that extreme stance. They view it as a necessary evil, and would like to still see it rare. But why? Because somewhere deep down they know it's a human being. That's nuts that they're still okay with abortion, but I see that as something we can work with. And guys like Perez know this, so they want to keep prolifers far far away from their precious.

Bottom line, you don't make abortion unthinkable with just one political party. You don't make abortion unthinkable with just one religious faith. You make abortion unthinkable by shifting the entire cultures consciousness so they can see that yet again we've taken one part of the human family - the weakest and most vulnerable within it - and said they are not quite human. They are not quite worthy of life. They can be viewed as property and disposed of however we see fit.

Throughout history, anytime we've dehumanized an entire population of people, it's always been viewed by future generations as a horrific travesty and massive human rights violation.

So, in conclusion, Tom Perez just made me one million percent more motivated to turn every democrat I know prolife. Because again, this cause was freaking made for their filthy little bleeding hippie hearts. They just don't know it yet. Signed, A Fellow Bleeding Heart (With A Brain)

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Ben’s the baby of the family, but don’t try calling him that.
Even with a limited vocabulary he still knows how to clap back. “BIG DUDE”
he’ll insist, referring to himself. Then the follow-up under his breath: “POO,”
-a curse word ‘round these parts - which we usually humor with a dramatic gasp.
He loves it. Of course, the effect is more impactful if everyone in the room
stops what they’re doing to be collectively offended.

Having someone with Down syndrome in your life is like having stepped through
an interdimensional gateway. Things are different here. Before I arrived, I was aware that people with special needs
were “out there” but they were probably being cared for by someone infinitely
more benevolent than myself -- like angels or something, the kind with fluffy
wings and halos. They lived in a separate place that I could only imagine. I
always just thought, “Good for them!”

But now everything has shifted. I’ve been allowed to
crossover into this dimension. Ben’s dimension.

In this separate place the world is brimming with hurt,
healing, and more purpose than I know how to handle. I didn’t know I could feel
this much and I didn’t know there were so many people who needed me - who I also needed. Benjamin was my family’s
little “interdimensional gateway,” and since we stepped through things have
never been the same.

When Ben gets up in the morning he's a zombie, which makes getting him ready
for school an adventure for my mom. He'll fall asleep while eating breakfast or
flop back in bed right before the bus arrives. (Lots of fun. My mom loves
that...) Yesterday, three and a half minutes before the bus was going to pull
up my mom was running around the house calling his name and panicking. That's
never a good thing to hear with little siblings. I jumped out of bed and flew
down the stairs to ask if she’d found him. He was downstairs in our basement,
showing our pet snake his homework. My dad is a science teacher. We like weird
pets. Ben had his little "Letter S" print off from the day before up
against the glass. "SNAKE," he instructed. Now when we don't know where
he is, we check the basement.

One time someone told my mom aborting a child because they
had Down syndrome was totally justified. Ben just happened to be sitting there
on her lap at the moment. I was floored. I had never been so baffled.
Instinctively, I needed to get my brother as far away from that person as
possible. Mom cried. I cried. We drove to a park and Ben scratched away with
chalk on the Buffalo city sidewalk next to my siblings.

“He’s ours. Ben is ours.” I told mom,
because seeing her cry is never a good thing. “He could have been someone else’s, someone who wouldn’t want him. But
he’s all ours. We get to love him.” She hugged me.

Ben is small but his world -- this dimension we’ve found
ourselves in -- is growing.

To say that people with special needs don’t deserve a shot at life is to say
that Ben has no value. And nothing could be further from the truth. Not only do
we need to protect people like Ben, but we need to celebrate every moment
they’re here with us.

Mom and Dad told us when he was born that things were going
to be... different. How different? None of us knew.

We were scared. Mom cried -- and like I said, when mom cries it’s weird. The apocalypse could be
vacuuming the final vestiges of habitability from the planet and my mom would
be sitting there in the fruit cellar handing out freeze-dried ice cream and
canned beans while maintaining some semblance of “cool” and assuring everyone
that it was gonna be okay.

It might as well have been the apocalypse with how we
carried on.

How long would he live? Would he be... happy? We googled furiously for answers, as if an extra chromosome
could possibly affect how much love we were willing to offer. We were
experiencing the shift – taking those first few steps into Ben’s dimension.

Now, on the other side, we’ve emerged with a better understanding of what it
means to love.

I call it empathy but my sister calls it Down syndrome
radar…. (It actively takes every cell in her being not to pounce on special
needs classmates and cover them in hugs and kisses.) Our compassion vocabulary
is expanding rapidly. And there’s a mischievous wink we get to share with
special needs families. “You’ve made it
here too, huh? Good news, we understand you! And guess what? We’re here for
you.”

And it doesn’t stop there. Our world is bigger. There is a
burden for those who hurt, for those who cannot speak for themselves. We
wouldn’t give that up for anything.

We are privileged.We are so very privileged.
Not everyone has the chance to step through this little gateway. In fact, most actively deny that journey. They slam
the portal shut and lock it tight. They tell people like Ben that since there’s
a chance what he has to offer isn’t “good enough,” they won’t have any part of
it.

“You won’t have a
quality life. You’re going to be different. We’re probably both going to
suffer, so let’s just not."

Pre-birth screenings are the reason that most Down syndrome
children will never have the chance to take their mothers by the hand and guide
them through that gateway.Our capacity
to show others unconditional love is being traded for a false sense of emotional
safety. Does showing compassion hurt? Hell yes. In fact, I think now that I’m
living in this other “dimension,” where special needs kids are no longer
invisible, life aches more. That ache is what drives me to love them harder.
They need it. They want it. And they deserve it.

I get to witness their potential firsthand -- through Ben.
And sometimes I see that potential snuffed out. And it hurts, but I have
purpose now - learning how to love deeper.

This world needs to heal. But who will heal us and who will teach
us how to heal others if we are eliminating every opportunity to step outside
of our comfort zones? We don’t need more locks on our interdimensional gates.
We need more Bens to let us know that we are strong enough to give our time and
our blood and guts to those who desperately need unconditional love.

One last story… Ben went through a phase where he would, well, randomly kiss
things when he was in a good mood. We’re still trying to figure out where this
came from. I guess if he got comfortable enough with his environment some rogue
synapse in his little head would fire more rapidly than usual and induce a
desire to show affection by giving whoever (or whatever) was closest, a peck.
It was actually really cute. But we found out this habit wasn’t limited to just
kisses on the face -- the target had to be eye level for him. At 8, he’s a bit
short for his age, around 3 and a half feet tall.

So one day we were out shopping and Ben was walking alongside mom, helping out
because he’s a big boy. Suddenly, he started to pucker up. The nearest target:
a complete stranger’s... um, posterior. He was gentle and brief, like powdering
a macaroon. Mom would have been mortified if the unassuming victim of Ben’s
affections hadn’t seen the humor in the situation. I’d like to say we learned a
lesson that day, or that we taught Ben something, but we figured it was best to
just leave it alone. There’s not really any use in telling someone that they’re
showing too much love.

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Had the pleasure of speaking at a 40 Days rally this morning and as I was leaving this gentleman stopped me. He said a few years ago he heard me speak at an event about my teen pregnancy. I mentioned how no one could've made me feel any worse than I already felt for putting myself (and now an innocent child) into that predicament at 16.

If I would've been met with shame or anger, I would've welcomed it oddly enough, because it's what I felt I deserved. I hated me. And I thought everyone else should hate me too.

But to my surprise, no one did. They loved me. They supported me. They offered me options. They cut through my self-loathing with love. They helped me eliminate the crisis, not the pregnancy.

I know how lucky I was to have had that. Not a day goes by that I take it for granted. ALL WOMEN deserve that kind of support.

He said my story impacted his activism, and that's when I read his sign. Then suddenly realized how bad my allergies had gotten and excused myself.This is the Prolife movement, y'all.

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

What an incredible thought. Take a moment not to be offended, but instead soak that sentiment in.

To a child that knows nothing more, this is the power a mother holds. We are everything. Their giver of life, their protector, their nurturer, their shelter, their food source... everything.

When did we stop embracing that power?

When did we stop celebrating it?

When did it become something to destroy?

When did we become at odds with those that depend on us for everything?

We control their entire universe yet feel "empowered" when we destroy it. How? And why?

Just because we can?

Because we are bigger and stronger and have the power to do so? As a feminist that sounds awfully familiar.

The power to create and destroy. The power to give life and take it.... I guess that does make us gods, huh? But isn't that everything people hate about God? How He allows evil, and destruction, and death. After every natural disaster, after every school shooting, after every act of terrorism people are always asking where "God" was and why he didn't stop the violence.

Yet, when the violence is suddenly a "woman's right to choose" we are silent in the face of human oppression.

Our ability to destroy another human being simply because they are powerless against our aggression, and can't say no... that will never be a human "right." Because that is the very definition of oppression.

We have so much power.

But how will we use it? For good or evil? To give life or take it?

Violence against human beings - no matter how vulnerable, weak, or unwanted they are - that can never be something that we champion as feminists, or people.

We fight for those who cannot fight for themselves.

And because of that, abortion is the human rights violation of our lifetime.